If you have an interst in beachcombing, then this is the book for you! I started reading this book the moment it arrived in my mailbox.I couldn't put it down. The author did a great job of describing the in's and out's of this subject, with many stories as well as tips and tricks to improve your chances of Sucess in the pursuit of this pastime.He has stories and great photographs ( black & white ) of the places he has beachcombed, and many recomendations about how and where to find the good stuff.From Alaska to South America as well as many other places in the Pacific ocean are covererd in good detail.This would be a great book for anyone visiting the coast or living there.

I have owned a copy of this book since I was 15 years old in 1983. I ordered that copy from the now-defunct Outdoor Life Book Club, and that fact that I recently ordered another copy from Amazon.com, to ensure that I'll be able to read and re-read it for years to come, should tell you what I think of it. The late Ben East (he passed away in 1990) was a fine wordsmith with a voluminous knowledge of the outdoors in general and bears specifically that sprang from 60+ years of experience. He writes with an easy, very readable and entertaining style, with many anecdotes of bear behavior, bear hunting and even bear attacks that will cause you to read and re-read this book for years. Just as I have. Very highly recommended.

Pictures and descriptions of many famous and not-so-famous railroad bridges abound in this beautiful hardcover book. Return to a time when things were built to last, and the iron horse was king!

Howard Harrod's Becoming and Remaining a People: Native American Religions on the Northern Plains argues that the changing of rituals and other aspects of religious practice played a pivotal role in the transformation of the formerly agricultural culture of the Northern Plains into a buffalo culture.

Harrod agrees that the white person's contact with the Native American's had a substantial impact on Native society. He is contending that an exclusive emphasis on contact with the whites can obscure the actions of the Native. Native Americans were not passive spectators to the influx of Europeans; in fact, the Natives actively responded to their changing circumstances ritually as well as politically. This means, that their religious system underwent change that in turn impacted the social structures of Northern Plain culture.

This active change on the part of the Northern Indians is a point of incredible importance. Harrod notes that many of the religious innovations were not seen as a break with tradition. Instead, they were perceived as a development of already existing religious and cultural practices and, thus, continuous with the Northern Plain Native American's social existence. Specifically, these changes could be legitimized by the peoples' visions and dreams. Harrod argues, moreover, that these changes are a testimony to the sheer capability of the Native Americans.

Written by the top-notch experts working in bee systematics today, this book is extremely well conceived and executed. It would be very useful for pollination ecologists and others who encounter wild bee species and are at a loss as to what they're dealing with.

Kurten at al have described the wonderful variety of large mammals that lived in North America for millions of years, until as recently as 13,000 years ago. Saber- and scimitar-toothed cats, camels, sloths, mastodons, lions, cheetahs and other animals combined to make North America a teeming home to large game more diverse than Africa now has. Many fine illustrations accompany the text.

The book is well-written, easily accessible to the interested lay person and does not require college level understanding of morphological bone analysis. Having been to southern Africa in 1997, I now cannot drive or hike through rural North America without imaging mammoths, tapirs, bear-sized beavers, one-ton running bears, and glyptodonts coming to the watering holes and browsing and grazing their way across the landscape.

For a comprehensive college-level treatment, see "Quaternary Extinctions," Paul Martin and Richard Klein, editors.

Many of us have been given the impression that the indigenous people of the Americas before white invasion lived wandering, nomadic lives of fierce hunting with little if any organized manipulation of their environment. This book corrects this impression with seasoned research. Indigenous California is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in the world. This work focuses on the ways the people of the region helped sustain the land's yield for their own uses. Henry T. Lewis's contribution focuses on controlled burn practices, though the subject is included in several entries from other researchers. Burns occurred in every environment, were seasonally timed, and helped maintain a varied-age, mosaic landscape. Peri and Patterson and Ortiz cover maintenance of plants for baskets. Helen McCarthy discusses oak maintenance. Philip J. Wilke reports on bow stave extraction from living junipers. Swezey and Heizer discuss management of anadramous fish and also agriculture among the Paiute of Owens Valley, which involved irrigation, planting of grasses, and burns. The editors have done an excellent job at selecting the entries. All are fascinating and enhance the reader's picture of the West Coast as it once was. This reader from Texas wishes enough info was available on his region to do a similar compilation. Combine this book with Leeann Hinton's Flutes of Fire for a more complete picture of the richness of West Coast culture and with Helena Norberg-Hodge's Ancient Futures for an understanding of how indigenous wisdom can be sustained to improve our current lives. Indigenous people still, in California as elsewhere, face continued repression and this book can give some idea of the worth of their cultures and the importance of supporting their struggles.

This book is a delight!! It combines wonderful recipes from home cooks all across the country with stories about each one. I collect cookbooks, and this is by far one of my favorites! I have read it over and over again. Mr. Clayton makes you feel like you are there with him in different kitchens as he gets the recipes. I highly recommend this book!!

In this depiction of what could have happened between one ranching family and the Nez Perce Indians in the late 1800's, a young girl shows how a simple but courageous act of kindness and concern can change the lives of many. The illustrations are a mix of paintings along with black and white pictures showing artifacts from the time period.

If I could read only one writer about the American West, it would be Dee Brown. His Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a landmark. This anthology is exactly what I like - a smorgasboard of fascinating, factually accurate tales that fill in our understanding of the events, people and times of the Old West. Best of all, I feel he's clear-eyed and unencumbered by politics in describing American Indians and the conflicts and interactions with white Americans. Read it and pass it along!